Both religion and fandom are characterised by strength of feeling. Both are to a significant degree inhabited by the emotionally needy: and it goes without saying that both have a significant body of sacred writings and a vast amount of commentary thereon. So why is there a clear distinction between religious belief and the fandoms that cluster round various television shows, films and books?

Many of the religious would bridle at the very suggestion of a parallel. Religion deals with that which is finest and best in humanity; it is all about relationships with the divine and, if you happen to have those particular beliefs, the choice of ultimate destiny between heaven and hell. Whereas fandom, on the other hand, is a pastime for people with too much time on their hands, the religious would say, time that could be better spent praying. Fandom, some of the religious would say, is a pastime which at best is often a symptom of mental instability and at worst a symptom of demonic influence or even possession. To which, any articulate Trekkie, Whovian or Potterfan, would reply – wasn't there someone once who talked about noticing the mote of dust in someone else's eye while ignoring the big piece of wood sticking out of one's own? Very few mediafen mount military expeditions against each other's conventions; and the currency of fannish disputation tends to be harsh online posts rather than anathematas and stonings. Furthermore, people who spend significant amounts of their time talking to a friend many would regard as imaginary are not best placed to comment on the sanity of those perhaps a little too interested in counting the nacelles on the Starship Enterprise. As to the question of whether an interest in Harry Potter or Buffy is a step towards signing one's soul over to the Beast of the Apocalypse, the sensible response, from fans as well as from the general public, would be to look at fundamentalist preachers, or Pope Benedict, when they raise the issue, and tell them to get a grip.

Nonetheless, once the merry play of mutual abuse is done, there is something in common between fannishness and religious feeling and that thing is perhaps best thought of as an interest in spirituality, or at least a sense of transcendence. Many, though far from all, of the bits of popular culture which have inspired obsessive interest are concerned with what the religious would call Last Things; it is, after all, Buffy, the slayer who preserves humanity from vampires and other demons, who remarks that she has had to learn the plural of apocalypse. There is a distinctly utopian strain in Star Trek, whose deviser, Gene Roddenberry, appears genuinely to have believed that it was possible for technology and progress to make the world not only shinier and cleaner, but also kinder; however compromised by his white male privilege, the intentions demonstrated by his portrayal of a multi-ethnic, sexually integrated crew were a beacon in their day, and a Good Thing.

The dictates of the particular sort of serial fiction which dominates television shows in particular – the desire of networks to have a product for recycling that can be sold in bulk without demanding prior knowledge by new audiences – means that stand-alone episodes confront the characters – and thus an audience passionately involved with them – with a different set of moral dilemmas every week. When shows break free of the networks to manage a more sustained narrative, we get, much of the time, an examination of the evolution of character as sustained, and sometimes as subtle, as those in a Victorian triple-decker novel; and if they were not that subtle as written, they are liable to become so when considered and debated by 5000 fans online. Jesuits teach an examination of one's own conscience through hypothetical situations; fans practice it all the time. Asking, as one book does, What would Buffy do? is hardly more profane than asking what Jesus would do, in an age when many of those most likely to ask the latter question manage to interpret the prophet of the poor as a booster preaching the virtues of financial prosperity.

The other supreme merit of fandoms is that, as a general rule, they do not take themselves too seriously. Even when they do, as with the true believers who interpret subtle nuances of dialogue as coded messages about the passionate love affairs between actors, the damage done is slight. Those religious people who scorn fans as obsessed with trivial fantasies should reflect that, in some measure at least, someone makes up every religion. After all, both Jesus and St Paul would probably have considered Augustine's doctrine of original sin what Buffy's werewolf friend Oz would call "a radical revision of the text."